Twelve people have been charged in connection with an alleged $10 million fraud scheme involving 12 “ghost daycare centers” in the San Diego area, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, which has dubbed the crackdown “Operation Cradle to Grift.” Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald of the DOJ's National Fraud Enforcement Division said at a press conference on Sept.
15 that more than $10 million in taxpayer money that was “supposed to support our children were stolen by criminal actors.” The operation that brought the alleged fraudsters to justice was part of “the most comprehensive anti-fraud strategy in history,” he added. All 12 defendants had been arrested the previous Thursday, in a coordinated takedown involving more than 250 federal, state and local law enforcement officers, who executed 12 search warrants at San Diego-area homes purported to be daycare facilities.
The charges against the defendants were unsealed Tuesday. “This includes creating the first new division at the DOJ in 20 years, the National Fraud Enforcement Division,” he said. “Our mission is clear: stop the fraud epidemic crippling our country. As we confront fraud, we refuse to accept it as an unavoidable evil across our vast benefit programs.” “It is simply evil.
And unabated, this evil erodes trust in our government, weakens our financial stability, crushes the soul of law-abiding citizens, and perhaps worst of all, hardens the conscience of the evil-doer.
We are resolved to reverse these trends.” According to a DOJ press release, the 12 arrested individuals all lived in El Cajon or San Diego and included: Fosiya Mohamoud, a 50-year-old native of Somalia; Abdulrahman Alawad, a 25-year-old native of Syria; Zetun Abdi, 43, of Somalia; Ikramullah Mohmmand, 25, of Afghanistan; Khetam Haouash, 37, of Syria; Khatera Hashimi, 39, of Afghanistan; Mariam Khamis, 42, of Sudan; Mohamad Alawad, 29, of